42 Quotes About Watches, Clocks & Time | Temporal Thoughts

Everyone loves a pithy or elegant quote. They can be used for big moments in life to put things in perspective, to celebrate success or to commiserate loss.

For the watch aficionados in the audience, we have compiled a list of inspiring, thought-provoking, and humorous quotes about watches, clocks, and the most inescapable of all forces, time. Scroll through our list to find a perfect quote for any occasion.

Quotes About Watches

“A gentleman’s choice of timepiece says as much about him as does his Saville Row suit.” – Ian Fleming

“Unlike diamonds, watches were practical. They were for people on the run, people with appointments to keep and schedules to meet.” – Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” – Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“People create all kind of fancy watches and clocks, never stopping to realize they’re building monuments to the greatest of all thieves.” – K. Martin Beckner (A Million Doorways)

“I like a few vintage Rolexes, and Panerais are good. I’m not into sports watches – I like chronometers.” – Jason Statham

A Million Doorways

“I’ve always loved watches my whole life. When I was growing up, I always thought of having a great watch as that next step – of making it, of a rite of passage.” – James Marsden

“The clocks understood, they kept moving, motion, following the truth that change is the nature of God’s mind, and resistance to it is the source of great pain.” – Craig Ferguson (Between the Bridge and the River)

“By putting forward the hands of the clock you shall not advance the hour.” – Victor Hugo

“The hours of folly are measured by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.” – William Blake

“All clocks break, and what breaks them is Time.” – Marty Rubin

Quotes About Time

“Time is an illusion.” – Albert Einstein

The Glass Menagerie

“Lost – yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.” – Horace Mann

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol

War and Peace

“In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” – Andy Warhol

“Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.” – Mother Theresa

“You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin

“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’” – Lao Tzu

Calvin and Hobbes

“The railroads needed standardized time; as a result, the technology of train travel shaped the way everyone gets up, eats, goes to sleep, calculates age, and, perhaps of no small importance, imagine the world as a whole, ticking reliably, with reliable deviations, according to the beat of one central clock in a physical location.” – Stacey D’Erasmo

“Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.” – Earl Nightingale

The Great Gatsby

“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.” – John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley: In Search of America)

Odes and Epodes

“Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end.” – William Shakespeare (Sonnet LX)

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

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